Another report from the road (again, again)

jasonrohrer · 2020-11-24 14:40:15

We've finally settled on a town in New Hampshire: Dover.

The community of liberty-loving people in the area is extremely vibrant. Lots of other no-school kids for our kids to interact with. Lots of community gatherings and activities. I might need to brush up on cryptocurrency, but it definitely feels like "finding one's people."

And the SKIES. My goodness, I had forgotten how beautiful tumultuous, partly-cloudy skies can be. We have mostly solid blue skies in Davis, California. But here, the sky looks different literally every day. So many scenes where "heavenly" sun rays are piercing through and shining down in dazzling arrays, with such a wide dynamic range. And the sunsets. Even on a cloudy or rainy day, it seems to partly clear up by sunset, providing a textured multi-scape for the setting sun to color. We were expecting it to be "gloomy" here, but so far, we've had at least some bright sunshine every single day. It was pouring yesterday, until sunset, and this morning I have a bright sunrise shining through my window.

They also seem to enforce their laws against victim-producing crimes here (instead of catch-and-release), and they aren't taxing and regulating their economy into the ground (almost every business has a "we're hiring" sign in the window, and teenagers can actually find jobs here, unlike Davis, where literally no teenagers worked, because every business was barely afloat with a skeleton crew of employees). And they're actually sheltering the homeless here, and then forcing the ones who don't want shelter to pack up an leave public spaces (I don't know what the best solution is, but long-term camping on the public sidewalks is probably not it).

Oh, and the fact that you can get twice the house for half the price is a major bonus. The median house price in Davis has risen to $725,000, in the midst of urban flight from the nearby San Francisco.

Of course, there's urban flight on the East Coast too, and guess what? The word about those New Hampshire skies has gotten out. When a house comes on the market here, it sells in a day or two.

So now we're just waiting for the next one to come on the market, so that we can jump on it.

We had a few busy weeks where we were visiting towns non-stop, but it feels like we're settling in a bit now. I don't have my scanner or art supplies with me, but I will be tackling outstanding bugs in an update soon.

Thank you for your patience during this transition.

QuirkySmirkyIan · 2020-11-24 18:06:54

God bless you Jason.

Arcurus · 2020-11-24 20:08:26

Hey Jason, welcome back! New Hampshire sounds great!

Kilian · 2020-11-24 20:44:39

Dear Jason,
Great to have you back!
Everyone needs every now and then time to take care of more pressing matters

Morti · 2020-11-24 21:07:01

jasonrohrer wrote:

"heavenly" sun rays

The word is crepuscular, it's not as poetic as heavenly, to religious minded people going through their midlife crisis, i.e. realizing you failed to be the great person your kidself imagined you were going to become, but it's an honest, descriptive, word.

Don't give up on being great.
It's not over yet.

--

I was thinking of offering you the 2.4 acres of land my camp is on, to build a home, but it's no California or New England, the woods of Northeast Michigan wouldn't look impressive on your resume. Less you spun it to sound good.

--

Is that the same Dover in Creepshow, was it? "Thanks for the ride, lady!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxOc0uacSBM

Not sure, there are like 30 places in the United States named Dover.

Morti · 2020-11-24 21:38:42

Honestly though, great to know you are attaining some degree of stability, once again.

Focus on being a great Dad and all will be well.
They're more important than any one of us.

I love you, Jason.

Kinrany · 2020-11-28 15:12:11

jasonrohrer wrote:

The community of liberty-loving people in the area is extremely vibrant. Lots of other no-school kids for our kids to interact with. Lots of community gatherings and activities. I might need to brush up on cryptocurrency, but it definitely feels like "finding one's people."
And the SKIES. My goodness, I had forgotten how beautiful tumultuous, partly-cloudy skies can be. We have mostly solid blue skies in Davis, California. But here, the sky looks different literally every day. So many scenes where "heavenly" sun rays are piercing through and shining down in dazzling arrays, with such a wide dynamic range. And the sunsets. Even on a cloudy or rainy day, it seems to partly clear up by sunset, providing a textured multi-scape for the setting sun to color. We were expecting it to be "gloomy" here, but so far, we've had at least some bright sunshine every single day. It was pouring yesterday, until sunset, and this morning I have a bright sunrise shining through my window.
They also seem to enforce their laws against victim-producing crimes here (instead of catch-and-release), and they aren't taxing and regulating their economy into the ground (almost every business has a "we're hiring" sign in the window, and teenagers can actually find jobs here, unlike Davis, where literally no teenagers worked, because every business was barely afloat with a skeleton crew of employees). And they're actually sheltering the homeless here, and then forcing the ones who don't want shelter to pack up an leave public spaces (I don't know what the best solution is, but long-term camping on the public sidewalks is probably not it).

Sounds fantastic :)

Morti · 2020-11-29 02:12:54

jasonrohrer wrote:

And they're actually sheltering the homeless here, and then forcing the ones who don't want shelter to pack up an leave public spaces (I don't know what the best solution is, but long-term camping on the public sidewalks is probably not it).

Could we, come up with a solution for this problem?
I mean us, on this forum.

Can we, at least, imagine, that this is a sort of pen and paper or statistical problem that we can solve?

I have had many ideas over the years, while in various situations... like, in 2001, I was actually homeless for several months and traveled around. I lived under a bridge, I slept in coffee shops, I stayed in vacant homes - even after the home owner had come home and relocated me to another vacant home of theirs, further downtown, where the neighborhood was 95% black, but the houses were beautiful homes all, I would estimate, 50-100 years old, made when the Midwest was booming post WW2, as the iron, copper and coal industries switched over from making machines of war to automobiles and home appliances. I was homeless in 2001 in Indianapolis. Prior to that I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan from fall of 99 until spring of the year 2000. And while in Grand Rapids I found a lot of work that just barely kept me off the street.

I have some ideas for how to deal with the housing problem for the poor.
Designs for cities, streets and structures.
Changes to laws and attitudes that would take generations to become culturally normal.

Let's look at some curves.

The bell curve.

Boy wouldn't it be nice if things were like this?
The poor and the rich at opposite ends, the middle class, cozy and fat, in between?

It's not like that. The range of incomes and wealth...

Oh, it's a left modal with a positive skew alright.

Except it's more like this.

Something like that.

But where is the bulk of the curve?

Billions of people with thousands of dollars worth of wealth, each, right? Where is that bulk in the curve that gives it it's supple shape?
Where are the millions of people with millions of dollars?

The United States is probably 350 million people, Earth is 8 billion, 8,000/350=22.86, 22.86*11.8M=~270 million households around the world worth over a million US dollars? In your dreams.
What is the wealth per capita of the US compared to the rest of the world?
What is a household?

Here is some more info on adults, around the world.

Nearly 3 billion adults have less than $10,000 in wealth.

How do we expect those people to afford homes?

Perhaps a new view of what a city layout should be, is in order?

What is a household?

People need to eat, people need to stay warm enough not to freeze to death, people, use their brains to navigate their environments, and those parts of our environments we spend the most time; that we become most familiar with, that we personalize, where we are comfortable enough to sleep, become our homes.

Millions of people... billions, are getting by with next to nothing for food, clothing and shelter, compared to billions of others.
But the ones we should be most concerned about, have nothing what-so-ever of value to the most of the world. Except for maybe a vote, a little labor, or as pawns in political/economic/religious chess, they have nothing.

Can we keep them alive in new cities?
Can we keep them healthy?
Can we give them enough environmental comfort?

How do we get them homes?

There are so many things to argue about, just on this one matter. But the more we, who have homes, argue, the longer each of them goes on suffering.

--

Comfort is not hard to find. It doesn't cost much.
Just a place to sleep, mostly. We're okay being less comfortable awake. Walking the streets, the rivers, the beaches, sitting at libraries and parks, looking at monitors, people, and the rest of the environment itself. There are too many things in this world to occupy a homeless person's time; too many leaves blowing in the wind, to watch, as they find muddy puddles to settle in.

--

Property value is a real thing, despite money being what is is for now, the environments where people live, work and recreate, have value, to each person.
A lot of values.

Let's take the RCI values of Simcity, for instance, (I like to think of them as RICE; Residential, Industrial, Commercial, Everything in between) and consider where we find homeless people and why. First, we had nothing... well, even that isn't entirely the best way to look at it, but, we had the clearings in the woods we slept and lived near, and we had the food we gathered and shared. Maybe going back to the very beginning of homo sapiens, or even hominids, isn't the way to go about this, but, it should give you a better sense of whats valuable and why people want to be near it.

But for now, let's look at a modern day city.

Let's take a look at some things regarding Dover, Vermont
ZONING BYLAWS - https://www.doververmont.com/sites/defa … 202007.pdf
Zoning Map 1 - https://www.doververmont.com/sites/defa … ngmap1.pdf

Zoning Map 2 - https://www.doververmont.com/sites/defa … ngmap2.pdf

Zoning Map 3 - https://www.doververmont.com/sites/defa … ngmap3.pdf

I especially like that last one; "Sensitive Wildlife Resource Overlay District" meanwhile, according to you, Jason, they're like "Get out of here, you bum!" and there is no low income housing districts, no land where people are welcome to sleep freely, no places designated for people who don't feel like they belong in any other, but want to be near any one in particular. Of course those things don't exist, no one plans for people to be homeless, or, householdless.

None-the-less, homeless people are attracted to the same resources as non-homeless people; especially people themselves. And not for their resources, but for their company. (Not their jobs, or their businesses, you dolt; their companionship, their characters, their, conversations.) So where can we accommodate these individuals who want to be, in a place, but don't necessarily want to do all the things that place expects of them, to be there? Well, you can lower your expectations and embrace more people, then, once embraced, raise their expectations of themselves; raise, their standard of living. But how are you to do that with the most challenging people, if your plan does not accommodate those most challenging ones?

What I am getting at here, is that the line should start, at zero. Zero, expectations, should be in place for everyone, from the start. Just being alive, should qualify people for being somewhere. Homeless people need a place to be accepted, all the time, forever. This is the district of the employers, this is the district of the educators, this is the district for community services, this is, The District, where life begins anew, for people who wish to provide purpose, to each other.

There needs to be a place where homeless people are not stressed to integrate into other parts of society, first, and then there be a scale, a zonal gradient; if you will, for each district, as to what degree of expectations people have for one another.
(Maybe that is a little too far, but I trust you get the idea.)

There just needs to be a place where wealth starts at zero. There is no guarantee that wealth, which you would think would start at zero and continuously work it's way up over the course of ones life, there is no guarantee that human beings are not going to find themselves back at zero, at some point in their teens, or later in life. We must accept this as part of the reality we live in, where we use money to represent value, and place that value on land and property... but not people?
Not on people themselves, but on the services they provide for one another.

There needs to be a place where no service is expected of people, and no debt is accrued just being there.

Or we will have to settle with a universal basic income and low income housing to match, or, accept that there will always be a homeless 'problem' or, stop seeing it as a problem... The more you accept as a part of life, the more experiences you open yourself up to, both good and bad, but of course, these people are homeless, of course most of what they will provide will be bad, from money's perspective.

--

I'm so emotional right now... I can't finish this post.

I wanted to add structures to downtown scenes.
I wanted to talk about how homeless people are willing to risk their lives to sleep in unsafe environments and how that can be incorporated into bylaws and codes.
I wanted to draw plans for cheap, little homes that could be mass produced, like Buckminster Fuller might have done.

I'm just so mad right now... at a big chunk of people who have lived for a small chunk of life's timeline, for letting themselves become complacent in the overturning of values; from people, to money and the blurring of the line that distinguishes the two from one another.

I am going to give up on this, just, for right now.
Just, for a moment, and let this wound on my heart, fester and/or heal.

We CAN solve a great deal of problems, this is one of them.

Rookwood · 2020-11-29 02:23:07

wtf

Morti · 2020-11-29 02:27:13

jasonrohrer wrote:

We've finally settled on a town in New Hampshire: Dover.

Morti wrote:

Let's take a look at some things regarding Dover, Vermont

Let me not pretend this was intentional. I mixed up Vermont and New Hampshire. XD

Will you get the point? Yes.
Will you read this and laugh that I fucked up and forget the problem? No.

But I laughed, when I looked again and Jason's post (a third time) and read

jasonrohrer wrote:

New Hampshire

You have my permission to laugh as well.

Morti · 2020-11-29 02:28:32

Rookwood wrote:

wtf

Sup Rook!

Morti · 2020-11-29 02:36:25

Here are some links for Dover VT https://www.doververmont.com/ordinances … -documents
Here are similar links for Dover NH https://www.ecode360.com/32591412
(Yes, the government of the town uses a private webhosting site for these sorts of things... kinda dumb, but the rabbit hole starts here: https://www.dover.nh.gov/government/city-charter-code/ at the bottom.)

Not that it's important if you don't care about that detail. But, it's an example, that is relevant and interesting, given the matter.
Does Dover NH have a district for people with no wealth? Stay Tuned!

NoTruePunk · 2020-11-29 09:12:36

Homelessness is a feature, not a bug. You can't get people to pay rent without the threat of starvation, exposure and state violence propping up the profits of private landlords.

Homes should be owned and operated by the people who use them, at cost. Not traded as a commodity.

Morti · 2020-11-29 09:31:39

NoTruePunk wrote:

Homes should be owned and operated by the people who use them, at cost. Not traded as a commodity.

What if I find a good deal on some inexpensive building material and my friend let's me use his vacant lot downtown to make a bunch of little houses?

What if my friend decides he wants to divide that lot up into little lots for all the little homes, and we propose the division to the city council and, they make an exception for the minimal size of a lot and give us the okay? We pay the taxes on the little lots with a grant that is meant to go to "Projects for the homeless" and the people in all those little homes don't have to worry about a thing, as far as a place to live is concerned.

Is that imaginable?
Would you approve, disprove, or say nothing of that?

--

Let's say I own a vacant hotel downtown where people are known to be squatting 'illegally' and I don't mention it to anyone.

Do you think I'm being a good, or bad, person?
Feel free to be as elaborate or concise, with your replies, as you like, but do please make them, upon reading this.

NoTruePunk · 2020-11-29 11:22:10

Tiny homes are pretty low quality housing. It's better than nothing, but it's not a good option. I think we deserve better.

A better option is municipal housing. Very low cost, very good quality. High density is potentially much better for the environment too.

At lower densities I like the idea of housing cooperatives. This can take a number of forms ranging from community land trusts, to home owners associations, to tenant councils, to communes.

Last edited by NoTruePunk (2020-11-29 11:24:12)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-11-24 14:40:15

Another report from the road (again, again)

#2 2020-11-24 18:06:54

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#3 2020-11-24 20:08:26

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#4 2020-11-24 20:44:39

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#5 2020-11-24 21:07:01

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#6 2020-11-24 21:38:42

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#7 2020-11-28 15:12:11

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#8 2020-11-29 02:12:54

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#9 2020-11-29 02:23:07

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#10 2020-11-29 02:27:13

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#11 2020-11-29 02:28:32

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#12 2020-11-29 02:36:25

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#13 2020-11-29 09:12:36

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#14 2020-11-29 09:31:39

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

#15 2020-11-29 11:22:10

Re: Another report from the road (again, again)

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